Royal Indiscretion, chapter 31 (Patreon)

So, in the theme of writing what I want, I skipped a chapter and wrote what I thought was chapter 32. I then realized that the chapter I was stuck on sucked, added a transition to the front of the chapter I was writing, and I’m much happier with this.  I’m so glad I decided to skip the travel chapter. I want the guys to get together!

The car stopped, and Yves took a deep breath. This was where his ride was leaving him. In a thick accent, the cab driver said, “Victoria Memorial. St. Ermin’s isn’t even a half mile that way.” He gestured toward the greenspace east of the monument.

“Thank you.” Yves reached for his wallet.

“Fare’s paid,” the driver said briskly in an accent thick enough that Yves had trouble hearing the individual words. He found it so odd that native English speakers were the ones who had the most trouble speaking the language.

“Then a tip,” Yves said as he pulled Euros out of his wallet. The driver held a hand out. That was the last excuse Yves had for staying in the safety of the cab. Objectively his flight out of his country had been more dangerous. Nick had bundled him into an army uniform and introduced him to a pair of men who took him south to a waiting boat. That had felt like a dangerous exodus, but the worst Yves had feared was getting caught. On the train, an older man with furrowed lines across his forehead had escorted Yves before handing him a pile of bills to get him this last leg of the trip.

Now the cab driver was sending him off alone in the heart of London. Worse, Yves had that money. In ten minutes, he could find drugs. Part of him wanted to do exactly that. If he had enough cocaine up his nose, he wouldn’t care that his father was a killer or that his aunt had essentially told him to flee and never come back. Yves had very little hope that Albert or Mary would side with him once they learned of Yves’s split from his father. They had always chosen family peace—or the illusion of it—over Yves. And he had no idea how he was supposed to live. That would drive a strong man to drugs, and Yves was not strong.

A car horn blew. “Are you getting out?” the driver asked with an edge of frustration.

“Of course. I apologize.” Yves pulled the door open and the air-conditioning escaped into the muggy summer air. “Good day,” Yves offered before stepping out of the relative safety of the cab. He was alone. No one was here to supervise him; Nick had stayed behind with the dogs, and Yves could only hope he had a plan to deal with the Duke’s anger.

He likely did. Certainly Nick and Lady Anne had engineered an escape route with very little warning, which spoke of either paranoia or excellent planning. Which one, Yves was unsure. The cab pulled away, and Yves headed down the Spur toward the hotel where his aunt had told him to meet Doug. A young couple sat on a bench. A look of bliss suggested either new love or cocaine. Yves suspected the latter was more common.

He itched with an urge to stop and talk to them. He fingered the money in his pocket as each step became more difficult. Without his permission, his legs slowed as he passed the bench—so close. So damn close. Forcing himself to keep moving was painful, but he clung to the fact that his father would expect him to stop. That gave him strength to keep walking, even if his pace had slowed enough that the couple was now watching him, their expression still blissed. Definitely drugs. Good drugs.

An older man walking his dog gave Yves an odd look, and Yves took the opportunity to focus on him. “Excuse me, but where is St. Ermin’s Hotel?”

The man’s expression softened, so maybe Yves’s accent sounded less like an addict’s than a tourist’s. “It’s impossible to see from here, but you want to take this road down to Petty France, and take a left.”

“Thank you.” Yves smiled, and something in that interaction gave him the strength to start moving away from the footpath with the benches and the temptation. Now that he wasn’t looking at people enjoying the bliss of good drugs, he found it easier to focus on his goal. He wanted to see Doug—to reassure him that he would not have to live with the stigma of being a homophobe. Hopefully they could work together to figure out some way to mitigate any danger that the press would overreact by labeling Doug a homosexual, but even if Yves’s visit created rumors, that would be better than what they were saying in the press now.

At least Yves assumed as much. He didn’t actually know much about the culture of the United States outside of television. They had legalized gay marriage, so they couldn’t all be unreasonable in their prejudices. Hopefully.

Strangely, the closer he came to to rejoining Doug, the more he wanted drugs and the more he wanted the strength to avoid them. No doubt that was a sign of mental disorder. Yves felt pretty damn disordered.

He held the door open for an older couple leaving the hotel before walking into the hotel lobby. The white marble and decorative balustrade made him feel like he was in his father’s house. It was an uncomfortable sensation, and Yves hurried toward the elevator. Yves traded polite smiles and nods with a number of people, his body functioning on some automated routine until he found himself standing in front of Doug’s hotel room. The flutters in his stomach made Yves truly doubt his own sanity. He had taken a stance against his father and made his own life infinitely more difficult for a man who would probably blame him for the Duke’s vindictive streak. This had been one of the most foolish choices he’d made in a long and illustrious career as a fool.

But he had committed to the action now. He rapped on the door, bracing himself for any vitriol Doug might wish to share. Within a minute, Doug opened the door. His button up shirt hung open, displaying rather impressive muscles. His unkempt hair and the dark circles under his eyes undermined the physical beauty of his form, however.

“I apologize,” Yves hurried to say.

“Thank fuck you’re safe.” Doug caught him in a hug that stole Yves’s breath. That was a rather odd way to use profanity, but no more odd than the physical embrace.

“Of course I am. But I apologize for any rumors my father might have created in order to assassinate your character.”

“I was more concerned about your father assassinating you. Get in here.” Doug pulled Yves into the room with enough force that Yves had to lurch forward to keep his balance. “Didn’t you get any of your stuff out?”

“My stuff?” Yves could not track this conversation. On the trip here, he had imagined many discussions, but this... this had not been a possibility Yves had considered. “Things can be replaced. Your reputation is of more import.”

“My reputation will recover. Grab a seat.” He gestured to the small couch tucked under a window.

Yves frowned. “You don’t sound surprised that I’m here.” If anything, he sounded pleased—a reaction Yves couldn’t quite understand.

“Caro called me and told me you planned to come, but I was worried.” Doug sat on one end of the couch and rested one ankle on the knee of his other leg. Now his shirt fell completely open. Yves kept his gaze elsewhere. Ogling others was not polite.

“If you’re worried that my presence might cause more rumors, I can go elsewhere. I am well aware that your career requires a certain about of discretion—”

“Fuck discretion.” Doug shot to his feet. “I don’t care about that. I was worried that either you wouldn’t come or that your asshole father would stop you at the border.”

“Oh.” Once again, all the conversations Yves had practiced in his head were utterly useless.

Doug frowned. “You thought I would care more about my career than your safety?”

“I think you are overstating the danger my father poses. He is far more likely to damage my ego than physically hurt me.” Standing so close to an exposed and attractive Doug was creating a problem Yves had not anticipated. He sat and crossed his legs to provide some cover before he could offend the man.

“The man who killed the mother of his child is not likely to be a physical threat?” Doug’s tone rose. “Are you listening to yourself?”

“You misunderstand Duke Gerard.”

For long seconds, Doug stared at him—eyebrows up, abdomen still exposed. Slowly he sank down to sit next to Yves. “Really? Is that why Lady Anne smuggled you out of the country in a stolen uniform?”

“How did you know that she took such measures?”

“She called and asked how far I would go in order to protect you.”

Yves blinked, his brain unable to easily connect any of these pieces of information into a logical pattern.”Why would she reach out to you?”

Doug shrugged. “I suspect Caro called her, but I didn’t actually ask. I find with Caro, I get less heartburn if I don’t know what she’s doing behind the scenes.”

“Caro?” Yves was only getting more confused. “Why would...” He narrowed his eyes. “What did you do?” The only way Lady Anne would include an outsider in her schemes was if that outsider had already gone and inserted his muscular American foot in the situation.

“I did what I had to if I wanted to protect you.”

“That is not an answer.” A half second later, Yves added, “And why are you so concerned about protecting me? I don’t need protection.”

“You are living in a country where your mother’s murderer is about to become king. You need someone’s protection,” Doug argued; his position had some merit.

“Do you believe you are the one to provide that protection? Do you see yourself as a knight in shining armor? I think you’re too American and too...” Doug was too vulnerable. He lacked even the poor allies Yves had in the court; however, most men objected to being seen as weak. Yves did.

Doug crossed his arm. “Poor? Stupid? White trash?”

“I never insinuated you were stupid, and I don’t know what ‘white trash’ means, although I can assume it has something to do with being a human worth discarding, in which case, I don’t believe that to be true. However, I can protect myself.” Yves sat up a little straighter. It was time for him to grow up and start doing exactly that.

Doug snorted inelegantly. “None of us can protect ourselves from our fathers.” The unexpected sympathy derailed Yves’s thoughts again. Doug was annoyingly able to head in exactly the direction Yves’s didn’t anticipate and didn’t prepare a response to address. Very annoying.

After an awkward silence, Yves said, “You have still not answered my question. What did you do? What is your part in this drama?”

Doug leaned back and his expression resembled a particularly satisfied cat. “I had Caro leak the story about me throwing around homophobic insults and getting kicked out of your country.”

“You—” Nothing this annoying man did made any sense. None of it. Yves closed his eyes.

“I wanted to give you a plausible excuse for leaving the country—one that didn’t include King Alphonse telling you the truth about your parents,” Doug said in a defensive tone.

“You assumed I would play the knight in shining armor to save you,” Yves said. Doug had put his own head onto the chopping block, and he had counted on Yves to ride to his rescue. Yves. Yves had barely managed to walk past a bench where he might have found drugs, and Doug had put his entire multi-million dollar career on the line, trusting that Yves would save him. Yves felt as if his stomach dropped out of his body or perhaps that someone had dropped lead into it. Of all the shocks he had endured in the last week, this was the greatest. The most terrifying. The most foolish. “You believed I would come?”

“I hoped,” Doug said. He didn’t appear as pleased with himself or as confident now.

“That is pure manipulation.” Yves had intended to communicate anger and frustration. Instead his voice staged a mutiny and came out bewildered.

Doug offered him an easy grin and a half shrug. “You essentially kidnapped me to get me to accompany you to King Alphonse and pitch my hotel idea.”

Doug was infuriating. “Those are not the same,” Yves said.

“Oh, they are. The difference is that you knew I couldn’t escape going with you to see your uncle because you didn’t tell me that my car was at your father’s house. I gave you a choice.”

“I could have allowed the press to paint you as an unforgiveable homophobe. You could have lost your main source of income.”

“Exactly. That was your a choice.”

“You must believe me a monster if you think that was a choice.”

Doug’s grin grew wider. “I think you’re a good man or I wouldn’t have taken the risk.”

“I am less good than you assume.” Yves thought about that couple on the bench. He was sick over how close he had come to choosing drugs. He nearly abandoned Doug after Doug had put himself in such jeopardy. Yves was nauseated.

“You didn’t try to save yourself, but you came when you thought you had to save me. That’s a good man.” Doug slapped him on the arm. “I was getting ready to order room service. What do you want?”

Yves bolted for the bathroom.